Inside twisted brothers' sickening den of depravity where police found DOZENS of rotting bodies and piles of bones hidden behind secret door: 'Haunted to my core'

By SUSAN GREENE IN PUEBLO, COLORADO Published: 16:29, 13 July 2026 | Updated: 16:56, 13 July 2026 Patty Emerson was overcome by grief when Melvin, her husband of 13 years, died of kidney cancer in 2011, leaving her to raise their two young kids alone.  She remembers the comfort she felt when Brian Cotter, a funeral director from Pueblo, Colorado, came for Melvin's body and assured her that he'd handle the cremation with respect and care. 'He looked at me sincerely and thanked me for trusting him with this one final act,' she told the Daily Mail.   But Melvin Emerson wasn't cremated, as paid for and promised.  Fourteen years later, his corpse was found badly rotted and decomposed, stashed with dozens of others in a secret room at Cotter's Davis Mortuary.  It took authorities more than ten months to arrest Cotter and his brother Chris, who each now face 125 felony counts of corpse abuse, plus forgery and theft charges. They have not yet entered a plea for the charges. Families are furious that the brothers bonded out of jail on June 26, free to move about the same community as the people they are accused of betraying. And more than ten months after the bodies were found squirreled away so gruesomely, they're still waiting to understand why. 'I'm haunted by this, haunted to the core,' Emerson said before the brothers appeared in court again last Thursday. 'And I'm desperate for anything that can make sense of it.' The remains of Patty Emerson's husband Melvin were among those found rotting in the Davis Mortuary last year - some 14 years after she trusted them to cremate him Brian Cotter, 65, (left) and his brother, Christopher Cotter, 60, (right) were arrested last week and hit with a slew of charges, including 125 counts of abuse of a corpse At least two dozen decomposing bodies and other remains were found behind a hidden door in the Davis Mortuary funeral home  in Pueblo, Colorado, authorities said Brian Cotter, 65, the more high-profile of the two brothers, was a fixture in Pueblo's civic life as the owner of a trusted mortuary, the elected county coroner since 2015 and a longtime member of the Pueblo Masonic Temple Lodge 17, which operated in the same building as his funeral home.  He had also served as the Colorado state grandmaster of Masons. He and his brother framed their funeral work as an act of neighborliness. 'Brian and Chris Cotter are able to serve their friends and neighbors from throughout the region with compassion which is sometimes rare in the funeral business today,' their website read. Their folksy message was a response to a string of remarkably grim funeral home scandals that had rocked Colorado, the state with the loosest death care industry standards in the nation. In 2018, the owners of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose were convicted of dismembering bodies and brokering body parts to companies and universities. Grieving families were given fake ashes, while owners Megan Hess and Shirley Koch were selling human heads for $500, plus spines, legs and feet for profit. In 2023, Lake County Coroner Shannon Kent was discovered mixing cremated remains and mishandling bodies. He was convicted of official misconduct and unlawful cremation acts. That same year, Jon and Carie Hallford, the owners of Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, were found to have left nearly 190 bodies stored in degrading conditions, some stacked on top of each other. John Cordova, who was a childhood friend of the Cotter brothers, said he trusted them to cremate his granddaughter - only to learn that they didn't Sheldon Robinson, who learned in March that the remains of his mother, Patricia Robinson, were among those in the Cotters' secret room, said: 'It just feels like we're not being told everything we should be' Christopher Cotter, 60, appeared in court on Thursday after being arrested along with his brother and hit with a slew of charges, including 125 counts of abuse of a corpse That case prompted a new law in 2024 requiring that the state inspect funeral homes for the first time since it scrapped its licensing system in 1983. Last August, the state visited the Cotters' funeral home. Inside, inspectors noticed what they described as 'a strong odor of decomposition' and a closed door hidden behind a cardboard display. State records show that when they went to remove the display and open the door, Cotter asked them not to. Inspectors went in anyway, and behind the hidden door found a macabre scene with corpses in various stages of decomposition.  There turned out to be 24 rotted bodies, 83 cremains, 16 sets of bones and two containers of human tissue in a scene that authorities have not described in detail nor commented on, given a judge's gag order in the case. The Cotters did not respond to the Daily Mail's request for comment.  Keith Nading's relatives said they unknowingly spread the ashes of a stranger in the wake of his death According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) documents, Cotter admitted to inspectors that some of the bodies had been improperly stored there for approximately 15 years and that he had given fake cremains to families who believed they were the ashes of their loved ones. The funeral home was immediately shuttered, and Brian Cotter resigned as county coroner a short time later. Then followed a long waiting game for a community in which families who had used the mortuary submitted DNA samples to CBI to learn if their loved ones' corpses had been mishandled. 'The months dragged on like torture. It just seemed like forever,' said Andee Fitzgerald, whose family finally learned in the spring that the corpse of her brother, Keith Nading, was among those that hadn't been cremated. Nading's wife had unknowingly spread the ashes of a stranger on her family's ranch. Authorities by late June were able to identify 19 among the 24 intact or semi-intact bodies found at the scene. Investigators are still working to identify the five others, as well as who the bones and human tissue belonged to. Although state and local officials haven't said it, it's unlikely the 83 unmarked cremains will be identified, a county official close to the case told the Daily Mail. The Cotter brothers weren't arrested until June 25, more than ten months after the grim discovery. They had only spent one night in jail when the judge lowered their bond from $1 million to $500,000, saying they are not a safety risk to the community. 'Not a safety risk? That's laughable. That judge doesn't give a damn about us,' said John Cordova, a childhood friend of the Cotter brothers who trusted them to cremate his granddaughter, only to learn that they didn't. The baby, named Soledad, died moments after she was born in 2012, and Cordova's daughter had asked him to take care of the arrangements. Trusting that the Cotter brothers cremated her, as agreed, he had the remains they gave him buried at his late wife's grave. Members of the Colorado State Highway Patrol Hazmat team prepared to enter Davis Mortuary (pictured) after the grim discovery last August Charges filed against former Pueblo County Coroner Brian Cotter, 65, (left) and his brother, Christopher Cotter, 60, (right) included 125 counts of abuse of a corpse Authorities dug up that gravesite after his daughter's DNA sample matched with the decomposed body of an infant girl found inside a box wrapped with a green ribbon at the mortuary. Cordova's family not only had to endure another cremation and memorial service 13 years after Soledad's death, but also the knowledge that his wife's gravesite had been disturbed.  He said he was haunted by questions of whose ashes they were given in the first place. 'We'll never know and I'll be wondering about it 'til the end of my days,' he said. 'I never hated anyone in my life until this happened,' added Cordova, who thinks the Cotters should have been treated as suspects in violent crimes and not allowed to post bond. 'It eats at me, it's eating at all of us that it's been almost a year and we still have no explanation for why they did it.' The body of Emerson's husband Melvin was still identifiable by fingerprints and tattoos, even though 14 years had passed since his death.  She said she gets sick thinking about what his body must have looked like when found – and when she wonders whose ashes were in the urn that the Cotters gave her. 'It's been absolutely horrifying,' she said.  Emerson and Cordova are among several families who have sued the Cotters, saying the brothers deceived them when they were most vulnerable by promising to treat their deceased loved ones with dignity and respect.  The lawsuit includes a lengthy description of what so many rotting bodies must have smelled like – with the implication that the Masons must have known something was amiss at the mortuary. Another suit involves a widow who says she paid twice for her husband's cremation after the mortuary's shutdown, despite having prepaid for both her and her husband's services in advance. CBI documents claim that in addition to the physical abuse of remains, its investigation identified evidence of systemic financial and administrative misconduct, including the fabrication of death certificates.  It also includes alleged misappropriation of funds from so-called 'pre-need' funeral contracts – arrangements in which individuals or families paid for funeral services ahead of time before a loved one passed away. Although some of those families may be reimbursed, many will not, state officials say. The 25 theft charges faced by each of the Cotter brothers stem from those alleged broken contracts. When inspectors went to inspect the funeral home last year, they noticed what they described as 'a strong odor of decomposition' and a closed door hidden behind a cardboard display 'The evidence uncovered during this investigation reveals a complete disregard for the dignity of the deceased and a profound betrayal of the trust placed in Davis Mortuary by families in our community,' CBI Director Armando Saldate III said last week after the Cotters' arrests.  'We are committed to ensuring that those responsible for these actions are held fully accountable.' Kala Beauvais, the district attorney in the case, pledged to provide 'as much clarity and closure as possible' for families, whom she acknowledged 'want swift justice.' Still, some families are slamming Beauvais for having waited ten months to make the arrests and for not being more transparent about the conditions of their loved ones' remains when found. 'It just feels like we're not being told everything we should be, and we have a right to know,' said Sheldon Robinson, who learned in March that the remains of his mother, Patricia, were among those in the Cotters' secret room. He said the news has traumatized him to the point where he has a hard time getting out of bed in the mornings, wondering what her corpse went through in that secret room and why the Cotters let it sit there and rot. 'Just the shock, the grief, the betrayal, it's overwhelming,' he said. 'We trusted these people. And they just threw it away for whatever reason. And nobody's telling us why.' Several families told the Daily Mail they now have such deep suspicions about funeral homes that they found it hard to trust anyone to properly cremate their loved ones once their remains were returned to them. Emerson said she went to the new crematorium with her husband's remains and stayed from beginning to end 'just to make sure, you know, it all finally happened.' 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